Ghostworld - The Beginning

It was quite reluctantly that I entered Ghostworld. I was only nineteen and enjoying my life. I mean as much enjoyment as a young man of nineteen studying in an all boy’s college could derive out of life - I had never even touched a girl unless they were female relatives - which in general male opinion makes you the owner of a life that pretty much sucks. But frankly it was not all that bad. I had just entered college and was gorging on my new found freedom from strict parental chaperoning, a state that would eventually facilitate my entry into the Ghostworld. Though Chinchionna vehemently disagreed with me when I made this inference, with her belief in predetermination and all – she said I would have died one way or the other as my time had come - I am sure I would never have accepted a bet to go and touch the middle pillar of the Karvi bridge if it were not for my tendency in those days to do anything and everything I was told I couldn’t do. I think my rebellion stemmed from a deep rooted indignation against my father’s over-protectiveness. You shouldn’t go deep into the forest, you shouldn’t climb that high a hill, you shouldn’t go far into the sea – I was met with these platitudes every time my friends had planned an outing to a place where there was the remotest possibility of danger. Usually it ended in his proscribing me from going with my friends till I could prove doubtlessly I wouldn’t be anywhere near doing those things. Agreeing to his caveats would have meant spoiling the trip for the whole group, so most of the times I opted out of the outings voluntarily. Those were the moments I truly felt my life sucked, and I would have given up tens of doe-eyed girlfriends to have my father substituted with a saner specimen.

Chinchionna’s indignant reply to this was terse – in her opinion my claim just displayed my ignorance of the fairer sex; it was because I never had any girl till then, whether doe-eyed or bow-legged, that I was so ready to sacrifice tens of them for a mere father. It appeared she too didn’t have much love lost for fathers, and even lesser for guys who belittled her sex. I had to placate her by saying that I wouldn’t have given up her for getting a better dad; we would surely have worked out some compromise.

Anyway as I was saying, I did accept in one of my rare moments of madness Ravish’s bet to go and touch a pillar of the Karvi Bridge that was right in the middle of the river. It was an extremely foolish decision considering it had rained well a few days ago, so the river was filled nice and proper, and a river in such a state is a not a good place for a brash fellow who has spent his watery life cavorting in bath tubs and calm swimming pools. Ravish didn’t know this – that my experience in swimming was limited to doing laps of swimming pools. His idea of me, and I had played a fair role in developing it so you can apportion some of the blame on me, was that I was a good swimmer now chickening out when faced with the somewhat turbulent waters of Karvi. I came to know this when I was joined in the Ghostworld many years later by Anand, a mutual friend. So Ravish bet me his walkman that I didn’t have the guts to swim to the middle of Karvi, and there being no third person to utter sane words in my ear, I jumped right in the river, more to keep my face and less to keep a Sony Walkman.

Well, I didn’t even manage to keep my life - while nearing the pillar I was sucked in by a strong undercurrent that lashed me against the sharp corners of a rock jutting out from a scraggy formation next to the pillar. It gave me deep lacerations in the left side of my stomach and my back. Writhing in pain, I quickly lost blood, suffered cramps in the cold water, and lost the strength to struggle against the current and come up to the surface. It was a painful drowning that led me to the Ghostworld.

A Dream

She was like me and unlike me. I was not very different then. I was still a dreamer. I don’t know since when I have been dreaming. When was it, fourteen, fifteen. I don’t remember. Those were the hours, the days, the months when you just dream. Beji encouraged me to dream. She didn’t teach me to dream, that’s what my parents thought. They said she had spoiled me. I would rock for hours on an easychair with my feet up on the table. Once my mother stopped me and asked what I was doing. I told her I was unhappy with the way Ivanhoe ended. I liked Rebecca more than Rowena. Ivanhoe should have loved Rebecca. He was an idiot, so I was trying to think of a better ending. Make him act more sanely. My mother screamed it was time for me to act more sanely. You should have seen the scene. It was damn funny. They blamed it all on Beji. But she was unperturbed. All they said slipped off her as if she was bathed in oil. She told them why the hell were they worrying about my idleness, anyway she was going to give me her money. And she would smirk at me from the sides when they were scolding me, didn’t give a damn what they thought.

That’s what I liked about her too. She also didn’t seem to give a damn what others thought as long as she was sure wasn’t hurting anybody. They could beat their heads to pulp and she could just sit there, grinning at them. I couldn’t do that. I would get excited, troubled, lose myself. And then she would take me to the sides and calm me down. It was funny sometimes. Women are supposed to be more emotional.

At other times she was like me. Dreaming strange things and feeling proud about it. She dreamed of a curve once. It was a white curve to begin with, but every time it looped up, it changed colors. When you touched it drops of colors fell on you. She was not very tall and in a single loop the curve outgrew her. All she could touch was the orange colored loop lying just above the white one. She played with the loop and before long she was an orange girl. She wasn’t happy with her color, so she tried to climb the curve. But the curve suddenly came to life. Shook like crazy and threw her down. Then she discovered it was the tail of a multicolored dragon. In the sky far above appeared a scary mouth breathing flames and bore down upon her. She screamed and tried to run, but before she could have taken three steps, the dragon cut her off. She closed her eyes and braced herself waiting to be burned to ashes. But nothing happened. She slowly opened one eye and saw the dragon grinning at her. Don’t ask me how do dragons grin, that’s what she saw. I like you, the dragon said to her. You are an orange girl, and I like orange girls. I don’t like black girls, and I hate blue girls, but I like orange girls. Saying that he blew a large flame at her scaring her again, but the flame didn’t burn her. It was a cool flame and it smelled nice. That’s how I greet the people I like, he told her. She said good afternoon to him, and told him that’s how she greeted the people she liked, and didn’t know how to do better than that. Apparently he was in a mood for a chat, but suddenly there came a meteor shooting across the sky and fell with a loud boom where they were standing. All around there was blackness and a lot of hullabaloo, and she was falling from building to building, till she finally came to rest in some London home where there were lots of people celebrating one of her old school friend’s birthday. It was a nice birthday but it was a boring dream and so she stopped talking about it. Told me she was really relieved it was an orange loop lying at the bottom of the dragon’s tail and not any other color. She would have been doomed otherwise, especially if it was blue.

I thought I had seen a similar dream sometime. I told her so. But my white curve was not multicolored, it was only white. I didn’t remember the rest of the dream. Only that sometime the white curve became bigger and bigger, looped across the sky and into itself and turned into the petals of a giant flower. I slipped on those petals down inside the flower and fell through its hole into a waterfall, then into a stream. My dream was not interesting or funny. Hers was. But we had similar dreams. Was it a coincidence? I don’t know, but I don’t think so.